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The Muslim Rights Concern
(MURIC?) has raised alarm that the six Nigerian Law School campuses across the
nation may not allow female Muslim students due for Bar Part II to wear their
hijabs during the 2017/2018 First Term Law Dinner, ?from Wednesday, 13th February?
to Thursday, 15th February, 2018.

?Its Director, Prof Ishaq
Akintola, in a statement, warned of religious crisis if the hijab controversy
is not properly managed.

The don insisted that any attempt
to bar female Muslim law students who wish to use hijab from doing so is an
infringement on Allah-given fundamental rights of those students as entrenched
in Section 38 (i) & (ii) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria.

?He disclosed that MURIC has
received reports of a number of female Muslim law students at the Agbani,
Enugu, Lagos and Abuja campuses who are allegedly being threatened with
disciplinary measures should they use the Hijab at the Law Dinner.

Akintola said: ?”?We remind
authorities of these Law School campuses of the provisions of Section 42 of the
Nigerian Constitution which prohibits the placing of any citizen under any
internally formulated restriction.

?”?We also call attention to
Section 13 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act (1991) which forbids
officials from taking any action “prejudicial to the rights of any person
knowing that such act is unlawful or contrary to any government policy

?”?We affirm clearly,
emphatically and unequivocally that whatever emanates from any circular in any
Nigerian institution (the Law Schools included) must comply with the dictates
of the Nigerian Constitution which is the font et origo of all laws, rules,
regulations, provisions and directives in this country.

?”?MURIC warns that certain
campuses of the Nigerian Law Schools are deliberately precipitating crisis by
stereotyping female Muslim students on the issue of hijab. Those who seek to
play God in the lives of Nigerian Muslims are religious fanatics bent on
intimidating, oppressing and persecuting Muslims.

?”This is a dangerous situation
capable of snowballing into a religious crisis whose consequences no one can
predict. The Qur’an affirms that oppression is worse than killing (Qur’an
2:191).

?”?This verse underlines the
gravity of the hijab phenomenon. Female Muslims are being persecuted in order
to give undue advantage to non-Muslims. It is religious apartheid. It is
unacceptable. We will rather be free men in our graves than live like puppets
and second class citizens.

?”?Those who make rules and
regulations impossible to obey make it impossible not to disobey. Law Schools
where anti-Muslim dressing codes are issued in a multi-religious Nigeria do not
belong to decent and accommodating communities of men and women.

?”W?e call on the Federal
Government and the National Assembly (particularly the House of Representatives
where the Amasa Firdaus case is still being investigated) to turn its attention
to what is going on in the Law School Dinners across the country. Muslims are
not being violent now but they are being persecuted.

?”?Those who fail to listen to
the dialogue group may have cause to regret it sooner or later.?”?